Data Science Skills Needed in a Big Data World

Last month, I wrote about the three skills needed to practice data science. Based on a factor analysis of many different skills, data science skills fall into three broad skill areas. These skill areas are: 1) subject matter expertise, 2) technology/programming and 3) statistics/math. Data science is essentially a way to extract insight from data using these three skills. Within each of these skill areas, there are specific skills on which data professionals rely to get at that insight. You might think of these skills as different tools in a data science utility belt. Let’s take a closer look at each of these skill areas. Subject Matter Expertise Data science doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Your ability to use technology and statistics to get insight always starts with interest in…